QUASAR GLOBAL INSIGHTS: Antivirus on the Desktop

January 10, 2009

Antivirus on the Desktop

I am frequently asked to suggest Anti-Virus solutions for my clients home computers. These days, there is a lot of competition. I have found that due to branding and name recognition, Norton or McAfee are installed on many of the home systems I run across. There are a few comparison lists out there where you can find out about your options. You can check out one of these: 2009 Antivirus Software Reviews, CNet AV Reviews or Antivirus Software Review.

Of course everyone is going to have an opinion. We have found that antivirus products that also have software firewall components, seem to be nothing but problems in the hands of the end user who does not understand the concepts. I think the number one troubleshooting issue for us on Internet Access , email issues or slow performance is usually associated with an integrated software suite that takes over the users system. We have found that Norton & McAfee require the most amount of support calls. If Norton is not setup correctly, it can block email and has actually become very tough to uninstall once it messes things up.

Our recommendations to clients is to:

Use a simple AV program like Kaspersky, BitDefender or NOD32 & keep it up to date.
Use Firefox as much as possible.
Install a popup blocker with your browser.
Use a hardware based firewall/router like Linksys or Netgear (Do not rely on software installed on your computer).
Make sure your computer is kept up to date.
Do regular backups of your data. If you do become infected it may be your only way to recover your data.
Do not open email that you are not expecting or are advertisements or unsolicited.
Do not open attachments that have extensions like .VBS, .SHS or .PIF or have double file extensions (name.bmp.exe).

We also suggest that clients shy away from Free (you get what you pay for) Anti-Virus packages like AVG. AVG will even tell you that the free version is not as good as the commercial version. Less protection, infrequent updates, issues uninstalling... etc.

You can read about it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_(software)

Posted at 11:45 AM in Anti-Virus | Permalink

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